Distributed hardware-in-the-loop simulator for autonomous continuous dynamical systems with spatially constrained interactions

The state-of-the-art intelligent vehicle, autonomous guided vehicle and mobile robotics application domains can be described as collection of interacting highly autonomous complex dynamical systems. Extensive formal analysis of these systems - except special cases - is not feasible, consequently the availability of proper simulation and test tools is of primary importance. This research targets the real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation of vehicle and mobile robot systems. To certain extent distributed virtual environment (DYE) systems are attempting to satisfy similar requirements but a few distinctive features set this approach apart. DVE systems put the emphasis on load balancing and communication overhead. In our case the emphasis is on the temporal predictability and guaranteed, timed execution of the experiment. The paper describes a simulation framework dedicated to HIL simulation of continuous dynamical entities with spatially constrained interactions. The underlying modelling concept is introduced. The runtime infrastructure is described, which allows for distributed execution of the models.